The words of Pablo Neruda struck my heart. I dedicate it to a special someone who makes me smile and sometimes makes me cry.
Love
Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the
perfumes of spring.
I have forgotten your face, I no longer remember your hands;
how did your lips feel on mine?
Because of you, I love the white statues drowsing in the parks,
the white statues that have neither voice nor sight.
I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; I have forgotten
your eyes.
Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to my vague memory of
you. I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you will
do me irreparable harm.
Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls.
I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every
window.
Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me; because
of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitate desires: shooting
stars, falling objects.
Today I ran across a quote by Anais Nin.. “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of weariness, of weariness, withering, or tarnishing. Wow.. The quote was extremely powerful to me.
Are we obligated to stay with people just because they love us? If you are not in love with someone, yet they are in love with you.. Is it your duty to be with that person? On one hand, it is the safest relationship you could possibly be in. (especially according to my brother) you have such little invested and the person is lovingly devoted to you. Yet, are you doing yourself a disservice? Are you experiencing your full potential in the arena of love? Or is it selfish to move on?
I am convinced thousands of relationships have varying degrees of love. Some I am sure are equally balanced but many many many others are see sawed. One person at a particular time is more in love with the other, and then perhaps it switches. There are also relationships where one person is always in the up position of the see saw and the other person will remain in the down seat. That is just how it is.
I left someone who truly loved me. That came with some guilt.. Some feelings of selfishness. However, just because he loved me didn’t mean I owed him anything. Number one, I didn’t love him. Secondly, we were not meant to be together, as the years progressed it became painfully clear. We should have never married. But I fell for the whole love package. If someone loves me, eventually I will learn to love him. Well. It didn’t happen. With that person it will never happen. For a long time I felt obligated to stay because he loved me. Once I gave it some realistic rational thought I realized, those are his feelings not mine. That revelation alone broke the chains of obligation I had felt for years. We are only responsible for our own personal feelings and it is selfish to use them to manipulate other people. There is no need to stay in a situation where love is one sided. Live your life for yourself and not to please another person. It will only make you bitter in the end.
If you gathered everyone I have ever known and posed the question what do you know about me, the answers would vary from right on the money to absurd. People will give divergent inconsistent ideals on who I am, and they are all right, yet all wrong. Those who really know me... Well still really don't know me. I keep so very much secret and hidden. The attention is always placed on what I want people to know. The exterior I present is confident, hopefully intelligent, cultured, refined, and just a bit elitist. However, deep down I have a secret heart. One that I never expose to anyone. No one has any inkling of its existence, and that is just how I like it. My secret heart is for me alone. I store all my hopes, dreams, and archives of past affairs. I know longing for certain things is outrageous and absolutely never going to come to fruition. My secret heart reminds me of that special dress you can't fit into anymore but you haven't the heart to get rid of. So you keep it in the back of your closet and every now and then pull it out and dance in front of the mirror with it pressed against your flesh. You invoke all sorts of fanciful memories, inhale pure the scent of pure joy. Just as feelings of regret creep up, you replace the dress back into the recesses of your closet. When I am alone, I retrieve my secret heart, rummage through the contents like one would do a hope chest. Stored in my secret heart is the love I have for my soul mate but the heartache that he doesn't love me anymore. There are pictures of my size 2 body which shall only be achieved if I conveniently catch malaria, ding fever, swine flu, and alcohol poisoning all at the same time. It has snippets of my childhood and regrets of times when I choose to be with my friends rather than my family. There are also many things I wish I had told my Dad before he died. Some regrets, some triumphs, and plenty of what if's looming in a perpetual state of purgatory. It contains names of children I shall never have and the capricious joy I experienced in my early 20's. However, just like that special dress, when sorrow starts to tiptoe towards me, I expeditiously put my secret heart back where it belongs. In the recesses of my spirit, to be enjoyed another day.
Why the absentminded oracle? I have an uncanny ability to predict the future. The problem is after I say something I forget I said it. So, these gem predictions only help people clever enough to pay attention when I am talkative. These predictions range from winning lottery numbers to the death of a person. They are all over the board. The monkey paw of this is, once again, I don't recall saying ANYTHING until someone reminds me what I said. Then, a mixture of creeped-out and pride overtake me.
